UFC responds to ESPN fighter pay story with their own video

I’ll hit on this more in-depth the near future, but the UFC has responded to ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” piece from yesterday with a video of their own. The video shows an uncut version of the interview ESPN did with Lorenzo Fertitta and also features interviews with Chuck Liddell, Forrest Griffin and Matt Serra talking about their own pay.

You can see the full Outside the Lines piece here. There are plenty of problems with it, most notably the fact that they’re pretending like the base salaries reported to the commission is the only money these guys are making from events. They’re not factoring in sponsorship money (which is often considerably more than the base salaries paid by the UFC), pay per view revenue or locker room bonuses.

There’s also the issue of using Ken Shamrock, who talks about fighters making very little money. The UFC destroys Shamrock at the end of their own video by producing a clip of Shamrock telling Tito Ortiz that they “made a lot of money together.” Shamrock and the UFC have been at odds for years and have been in plenty of legal battles, so he’s not exactly a source of great information.

The fact that ESPN shot this early last year and then held onto it all this time shows that they realized it wasn’t all that good. And it’s not. It could have been better and more accurate, but it’s not.

As I said, I’ll go more in-depth on the issue in the near future. For now, watch the video below.